In Quietness
by adele4
Summary: Isis/Malik/Rishid. Isolated in an oppressive environment, the Ishtars have only each other to turn to for comfort.


Isis/Malik/Rishid. Or Isis/Malik, Isis/Rishid, Malik/Rishid: I was thinking of the former, but the story isn't explicit on which one it is. Rated T for safety, there's nothing graphic.

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh.

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**In Quietness**

_one_

Step by step, we slide through the dark corridors without a sound.

There are faint flickers of light from the few rooms that have torches.

From time to time, we come across each other. We don't acknowledge the others' presence in any way. We keep walking in silence, without raising our head. I can barely see his strange eyes, our mother's eyes, so bright and ghostlike-colourful in the darkness.

Step, step, marching in complicated itineraries of circles and straight routes, so it will always look as if we had a destination.

We're playing.

We're children.

Malik has learned already to be as quiet and silent as us, and his steps are catlike and sure, too much for a normal five-years old.

He has mastered the game immediately. We stopped letting him win, even occasionally: he'd notice.

It's a complicated game which's rules have been explained only once, and if one of us would come to forget them, there would be no way to find them again: they'd be lost like a ship in the centre of the ocean, thrown out of the secret understanding that makes this possible.

Every question and every interruption has been planned. There is no way to catch us. There would have to read our mind to find out.

We are safe in the darkness and the silence; we need no more words and no more gestures. We never look each other in the eye.

Not a whisper, not a glance.

If Malik falls, Rishid will only help him up if there's someone there to see.

It's a complicated game of circles and signs, where everything interferes, and nothing interrupts.

I should have stopped it long ago.

But we've planned no command to make is cease.

Steps and steps, in silence. I pass Rishid in the dark. Without looking at each other, we briefly brush each other's fingers. We keep walking.

_two_

They've extinguished all the lights. It's too dark to even see you own hand, let alone the one of the person lying beside you.

We're down deep under the earth, like in a grave: but we are alive inside here, not dead under the freedom of the open sky.

Malik has nightmares: he whimpers in his sleep. Sometimes, there are words in his constant mumbling, painful and angry.

I want to wake him, but he never falls asleep again when I do.

Isis and I would have to tell him stories until the morning.

And during the day, he will fall asleep over his lessons.

And the nightmares will follow.

Finally, after what seems like hours listening to his pain, I lay a hand on his forehead. Sometimes, it works.

I don't dare whispering Isis' name. He has a light sleep.

He seems to calm down; his breathing becomes more regular. Just as I want to go back to sleep, his eyes crack open.

"Rishid."

He grins.

"You were awake," I say.

He turns his head in my direction this time, to give me another cocky grin, then snuggles close against me.

I caress his hair

_three_

Funny, how I feel better since father died. Sometimes, awake or asleep, I feel as if the pain (the anger, the want) is about to overwhelm me, like many times before, I remember. And then it stops. Is washed away and smoothened. It feels good and I don't want it: it is as if small parts of me were taken away, were taken out of my control, and I don't want to give up control, never again.

Rishid chases it away, the strange painlessness. He is besides me day and night, always, now, since father died. Silent. Following my every wink. Ready to make up for, he must know it somehow, the painful awareness that comes with his presence.

With our eyes closed, and without sound, listening carefully for approaching footsteps, we learn to map each other's body. Rishid's hands, Rishid's tongue, Rishid's body, strong and submissive inside me. I say, _brother_, and he closes his eyes, and he doesn't move away.

Once, the footsteps we hear are Isis', and we don't stop for her. I have my back to her, and I can see Rishid look up, eyes wide, and then her hand on my shoulder, trembling faintly. I turn to look at her. The pain that has left me seems to have wandered over her face, since father died, but she swallows and hides it. I can see now the strings that tie us to each other, only the three of us, and I will know how to pull them.

_four_

"Is this wrong?" he asks.

For a moment, I can't answer: there's obvious malice in the way he asks, and I am sure that he knows and is taunting me. But the fear, the pleading are there as well, and I know I have to reassure him instead of letting him fall further into aloneness and wrongness where everything good is forbidden. Where you can have the sun, pictures from the other world and love, but only stolen, never without remorse. This at least, I must keep for him.

But I won't lie. We're stopped lying like this when we stopped letting him win our game.

"No," I answer, in a mere murmur, but he can hear me, and I wrap my arms around him, so he can bury his head against my chest; I know the wrongly innocent expression is gone now that he can't be seen and, I hope, so is a bit of the fear. "No. But if you ever want to live in _that_ world, you'll have to abide by its rules."

I can feel spasms run through his body, he's crying or trying very hard not to. I only caress over his hair, again and again, until finally, he calms down. Only then, I gently pull back a little, just enough to see his face. Fearfully, almost violently, he pulls my head close again, and I let him kiss me with desperate need.

"I won't..." he murmurs."I won't leave this place. I'll stay, and learn, and protect the pharaoh's memory as I am destined to."

I want to say: "This is good, this is right", hope it won't be too long (will I bear his children, or Rishid's, and have the message carved into their back with burning knifes, with Malik's own hand, and live to see them carry it on?), but I can't, only press him closer, closer against me, to shield him against the whole world.

_five_

They are arguing. Isis's voice so calm anyone would be fooled into believing that this is truly how she feels; Malik shouts, angry, hungry, millennium rod spinning in his hand, glittering whenever light falls onto the gold.

When Isis looks at me, standing behind our brother, I lower my eyes. I miss her already. When Malik looks at me, I will follow.

_end_

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Reviews are much appreciated!


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